Tooth decay and dental disease can be caused by bacterial action resulting from plaque formation around the teeth and/or the entrapment of food particles in interstices between teeth. Removal of plaque and entrapped food particles reduces the incidence of caries, gingivitis, and mouth odors as well as generally improving oral hygiene. Conventional brushing has been found to be inadequate for removing all entrapped food particles and plaque. Therefore, to supplement brushing, dental flosses and tapes are often employed.
Traditional flosses have been fabricated from yarns of natural fibers, such as linen, silk, and cotton as well as various synthetic fibers, such as nylon. In order to improve the ability of floss to be inserted into the interstices between teeth, flosses have been coated with a variety of materials, such as waxes. In addition to improving floss lubricity during use, wax coatings have also been used as carrier materials for floss modification agents, such as flavoring oils, medicaments, texturants and the like.
Traditional flosses are not entirely satisfactory for a number of reasons, including their limited ability to assume thinner or thicker shapes to accommodate different sized spaces between teeth, their tendency to fray under conditions of normal use, and their lack of comfort for the user.
In order to overcome these problems with traditional flosses, efforts have been made to prepare `new generation` flosses of polymeric elastomeric materials. Among other advantages, flosses prepared from such materials have the potential to assume a number of different thicknesses depending on the stress to which they are subjected, and therefor can be readily tailored to a user's individual needs.
Despite the potential of such `new generation` flosses, problems have been encountered in the modification of such flosses with flavorants or other modification agents. Traditional wax carrier materials do not work with elastomeric flosses as the wax is not itself sufficiently elastic and therefore tends to crack under stress. Other problems found when attempts are made to modify elastomeric flosses with traditional flavor oils include inefficient use of such flavor oils, solvation of the floss material by the flavor oil, and the like.
Accordingly, there is interest in the development of new methods of modifying polymeric elastomeric floss materials. Ideally such methods should be relatively simple to perform, adaptable to large scale production needs and provide for efficient use of the modification agent.